


It was probably just the concussion.

by inkyandness



Category: Hot Guy P.I. (Webcomic)
Genre: Basketball, Blood, Concussions, Hands, Head Injury, John Mulaney References, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24083524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkyandness/pseuds/inkyandness
Summary: "Nando thought there was no such thing as a truly stupid person for a long time.And then Schmidt found his way into his life.And he still stood by that statement for quite a long time. Some may even say, longer than necessary, or perhaps, longer than it made sense to."(In which Schmidt gets mcfuckin' clocked. Upon reflection, this is just a recollection of my various traumatic experiences in gym class transcribed for the sake of the narrative potential of these two hot detectives.)
Relationships: Schmidt/Nando
Comments: 2
Kudos: 75





	It was probably just the concussion.

There was no such thing as a stupid person. Sure, there were misinformed people, sometimes even people who rolled high in intelligence, and low in wisdom, so to speak. But, there was no such thing as a stupid person, just normal people who made bad decisions.

Like seeing  _ The Notebook  _ in theaters twice. It clearly wasn’t a good decision, but it happened.

…

It was a matinee, too. 

It was pathetic.

However, to get closer to the point of things, Nando thought there was no such thing as a truly stupid person for a long time.

And then Schmidt found his way into his life.

And he still stood by that statement for quite a long time. Some may even say, longer than necessary, or perhaps, longer than it made sense to. 

It felt kind of like Schmidt made a devil’s bargain to thrive on social media, and in return, be incapable of literally anything else. He had seen the man eat a raw egg, misspell the word “sex,” and when Nando had mentioned his daughter getting really interested in Nancy Drew, he asked him if she was from some kind of TV show.

To his credit, he wasn’t quite wrong about that. However, to say that the light didn’t drain from his eyes as he said such a thing would also be untruthful, so it’s kind of about picking your battles at this point.

To be fair though, it didn’t start out as a bad idea. In fact, it was almost a good idea at first.

It all started because Nando needed to pick Nadia up after school, for a dentist appointment, and Schmidt tagged along. 

He didn’t really need  _ to,  _ but Nando saw no reason to turn him away. After all, members of the school administration already thought they were married, it’s not like sending him home to hang out with his roommate was really going to change things.

So Nando kinda accepted it for what it was, and was satisfied waiting near the steps of the school for Nadia to come out the door and find him, after getting his text.

And then Schmidt found the basketball court.

Of course, it was relatively empty-it was in the middle of 8th hour, after all- but there were still some basketballs laying askew across the court, and absolutely nothing to do for the next half hour or so, so…

Schmidt shot him a questioning gaze, the one a child may give their parent before running off to play, all wide and wondering, and _ honestly, _ what was Nando supposed to do with that?

So he sighed, gave a nod, and walked over to the courts to play basketball with Schmidt.

Schmidt never struck him as the kind of guy to like sports. Like playing them, like watching them, anything. In fact, now that he thought about it, he didn’t know if Schmidt liked  _ anything,  _ not in like a moody or cynical way, just that he didn’t know any more about his interests than he did his jobs, which kinda sounded worse as his best friend, now that he thought about it.

Did he like baking? Crocheting? Birds? Who’s to say? 

Although he didn’t give off the air that he spent the last 29 years locked in a closet eating saltines before strolling into his uber, didn’t he? Less in a catholic school boy kind of way, and more like a hard-boiled detective you’d find if you were reading a Jhonen Vasquez comic.

He couldn’t describe the vibes, but they were definitely present in some form.

Regardless, he made a mental note to ask him about his hobbies and interests. 

Because sports were clearly not one of them.

Even without blocking being the entire focus of his endeavor, Schmidt still somehow missed the basket every time he threw the ball. Now, Nando was not claiming to be a sports boy, sure, he watched hockey and the  _ occasiona _ l basketball game, kept up with the pro-wrestling circuit, and whatnot, but Schmidt had had five throws, and hadn’t even hit the backboard once.

He looked to be growing pretty despondent about it, too. 

There was something oddly pitiable and poignant about watching an almost 30 year old man look as if he was struggling not to cry because he couldn’t throw a basketball. 

Or maybe he was just staring at the sun. You could never know with this man, really. 

“Do you need help?” He asked, in the same way he might ask Nadia if she needed help with her homework. Not too placating. 

“I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” he muttered, before tossing the ball again. This time he hit the backboard, but ducked quickly to avoid getting hit in the face with the ball as it bounced back. “It’s not like I was great at this when I was younger, but I thought I’d be better now.”

“Better how? With zero years of practice since then?” Nando asked, getting the ball in a good sort of bounce pattern for him to dribble casually.

There was a lot Schmidt could say about that, like the fact that he kind of assumed that as an adult he’d have a better grasp of his motor movements and the coordination that came with it, or perhaps he kind of always assumed as a youth that he’d never even want to try to play a game of sports again, so he never thought about even trying to hone his skills since then, and maybe he was just doomed to the same mediocrity that befell his 15 year-old self, forever, which is why he can’t really try new things and-

“Height.”

“Mm.” Nando shrugged. “Well, no better time than the present.” Nando threw him the ball, nice and easy, and even though Schmidt braced himself for impact, it never came, as he caught it. “I just don’t see what you’re so worried about.”

“Sports and I just never got along,” Schmidt shrugged in return. “Kinda like shoelaces.”

“You can’t just say that without elaborating, and you look like you’re about to launch a javelin.”

“Just trying out some different techniques, where would we be if we didn’t dare to innovate?”

“Well, in a game of basketball, you’d be on the bench to be honest. Here, let me show you.” Nando grabbed Schmidt’s wrist firmly to move the ball to both of his hands, and began mumbling something or other about trajectories, or something of that ilk. Schmidt was more focused on the fact that he didn’t realize that Nando’s hands were that much smaller than his. It wasn’t by a lot of course, but he was certain that they may have been a fingertip or two shorter. He also had a scar on his right index finger that looked like it came from a stapler. There may have been a story there, but who was to say really. 

Schmidt at the very least found it mildly fascinating.

Mildly fascinating enough to let Nando launch the ball by using his hands, and not exactly noticing when it bounced against the backboard.

He did, however, notice by the time the ball was launched back at him at ten times the speed it had before, as it planted itself into his face.

There wasn’t a lot he could do about it at that time, so it just smashed into his face and knocked him back onto the pavement, leaving Nando in simultaneous shock and utter horror.

Panic sort of set in, but in that adrenaline way where it felt like his mind was exploring a hundred different options of things for him to do to handle such a situation, all the while the autopilot in him went to kneel at Schmidt’s side.

Call an ambulance? Too expensive, and he highly doubted that Instagram provided health insurance anyhow.

Go to the school’s nurse? A bit weird, pretty sure she hates him, would lead to an ambulance if it was deemed too serious.

Wait for Nadia? It’s not like the dentist was seriously in the cards anymore anyhow…

Focus. Focus. Focus.

Maybe he should check out the severity of the injuries in the first place, to see if it was something to really be worried about. He knew a cousin who got hit in the face with a baseball. Sure, he had to get four teeth replaced, but at the very least that was minor in comparison to the true danger head trauma can really be. 

Schmidt, at the very least, seemed to be only bleeding from his nose, where the ball had most of the impact, and based on the fact that his face was scrunched up in pain, it didn’t seem like he was unconscious, which was kind of a blessing in of itself.

Of course, maybe that just meant Schmidt’s facial muscles were spasming and he was just seconds away from death. It’s not like Nando was a doctor.

Nando delicately raised Schmidt’s head into his lap, making sure to keep one hand to hold him steady while he looked for some spare tissues to take care of the bloody mess that laid before him. 

And if he happened to be gently rubbing his thumb against his temple as he did so, well, it was what it was.

All in all, this kind of reminded him of when as a toddler Nadia had cut open her head on a wooden swing set. He didn’t know how she did it, or what playground even had wooden swing sets anymore, but his wife sat with Nadia as she cried, shushing her cries and humming with her, all the while wiping the blood away from the wound, which looked a lot worse than it actually was.

There was no hospital trip that day, and all she really needed to do was disinfect the wound before Nadia was back to toddling around their apartment, and getting into smaller accidents once more.

He had to give her this, she would’ve probably handled a medical emergency like this much better than he would.

Heck, he  _ knows _ she would’ve handled a medical emergency better. Why else would the school nurse hate him?

Of course, when he finally got the chance to begin to wipe the blood away, that was when the school bell rang. Surely Nadia could understand the delay, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving her to fend for herself between the hustle and bustle of the students. Of course, it couldn’t be helped.

At least Schmidt seemed to be finally aware enough of his surroundings to begin vocalizing it.

“My...ugh, my head…” He muttered.

“Sorry about that, bud.”

“Mmmmm.” He grumbled, trying to block the sunlight from his eyes. Nando remembered that he probably had some sunglasses in his pocket, and as he changed the way he was holding Schmidt’s head, he tried to dig through his pocket, only for Schmidt to clumsily grab at his hand, and continue pressing it to his temple.

“Wha-”

“Your hands are nice.” He hummed, almost as if he wasn’t aware he was saying it. “I like ‘em.”

Nando felt himself growing warm at that, though he can’t quite imagine  _ WHY,  _ and if only to make matters worse, Schmidt kept talking, in a sort of muttery way.

“They’re not like s...soft, but they’re good at other things, which is cool. Like ‘baksetball. You ever do sports? You don’t seem like a sports guy, but I could be wrong. I think the hair might be throwing me off...Track. You seem like a track guy. You run really well. Which is strange, because we don’t have a lot of opportunities to run as like, adults...Do you work out?”

As both potentially embarrassing and complimentary as this was, at least it might only be a concussion, based on the slightly slurred speech. Which, although a concussion is a rather severe thing to have to worry about, at least it’s a condition that Nando is familiar with, and has had experience with, and it isn’t like complete frontal lobe destruction, which although Nando is not aware what that would cause, he still maintains that it’s probably pretty bad. 

Luckily, this probably isn’t that bad, but it still doesn’t exactly mean he knows what he’s doing. Especially considering his “experience” with concussions is causing one in his 9th grade gym class during their badminton unit, so unless chucking a racquet at him is going to cure any lingering head trauma, he’s out of luck in that respect.

“Being a dad sounds hard. All I know that a dad was supposed to do was have a game of catch with you. I never got a game of catch. I feel like that’s a crucial childhood memory. Nadia, did you get a game of catch?”

“I used to do softball,” Nadia said, sounding worried as she slipped off her backpack at the entrance to the court.

“Nadia, what are you-?”

“I got bored waiting by the entrance,” Nadia ran to his side. “What are  _ you  _ doing? His head should be tilted  _ forward  _ to help the blood flow.” She muttered, pulling as hard as she could to get Schmidt sitting upright, which, to be fair, didn’t take that much. Nando reinforced him. “What happened?”

“...Basketball.” 

Nadia shot him a look that he’s certain he’s shot her, but it doesn’t seem to be on her list of concerns at the moment.

“Are you confused? Clumsy? Do you have problems concentrating or memory loss?”

“Nadia, that’s just how he actually is.”

“Don’t be rude.”

Schmidt hissed as he braced his head against one hand, and seemed to be looking for something with the other.  _ “Too loud,”  _ he muttered, squeezing his eyes tight. 

“I think he might have a grade 1 or 2 concussion.” Nadia explained in a low voice “Did he lose consciousness?”

“I don’t... _ think  _ that he did.”

“A grade 1 concussion has no loss of consciousness with symptoms only lasting 15 minutes, while a grade 2 concussion has the same effect, but the symptoms last longer.”

“Where did you learn all this?”

“Gym class.”

“Why are you learning actually useful things in gym class?”

“Why  _ didn’t  _ you learn actually useful things in your gym class?”

“Who says that learning how to fake heat stroke isn’t useful?”

Nadia sighed, but began giggling about it. “I think Mr. Schmidt’s going to be alright. In 15 minutes, we should at least be able to get him to the car. Then, he’s probably going to need supervision until the symptoms wear off. Who knows, it might take the rest of the day.”

“You’re going to need to get that cavity filled some time.”

“And I choose any some time but now.” She said, sticking her tongue out. “Hey, you think you could teach me how to fake heat stroke, some time? I hate running wind sprints.”

“I’m sure you can figure it out on your own, after all, you do have the internet.”

“Yeah, but I want to learn from the pro! The one who had to fake heat stroke without the internet! I want to hear the story behind that!”

“Ughh, do you really?”

“We have the time.” She said, and Schmidt seemed to be aware enough of his surroundings long enough to nod in support.

“Okay, so picture this, it’s the 10th grade and I’m…”

As Nando told his story, it was not lost upon him that Schmidt’s hand had finally stilled, when he found where he planted it on the pavement. He could tell that his hand was slightly bigger, slightly softer, and that there was one or two rings on his hand. Probably not wedding bands, though. He knew what this had the potential to mean, after all.

But, hey, it was probably just the concussion.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This story came to me when I remembered that in my 10th grade gym class, desperate to give it my all in our basketball unit, ran into a wall while chasing a basketball, and got a terribly severe bloody nose that there were multiple girls who were convinced that I broke it. I don’t know what I learned from this experience except the fact that basketball isn’t for me. The badminton story is also mine. Sorry, Emma.  
> At least I got a fanfic out of it, I guess.  
> The swing set story was my brother’s, though, so I have no idea how I’m gonna pay him back for it.
> 
> Tumblr: juliastartoons.tumblr.com  
> Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/juliastartoons


End file.
